Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree it won't be great for the arrogant, shiny only incursion runners. It would however be useful for FC's to see who's simply leeching from incursion groups (and believe me, it happens).

Outside of that, EVE won't really get much value from a damage meter... But it could do with some indicator (not a damage meter), to inform FC's whether the person meant to be dealing DPS is actually suitable for the fleet they're in, and whether they're not just slacking, but leeching.


I'd suggest a system whereby the average DPS is calculated for the fleet/wing/squad/whatever, and anyone not flying a logistics ship (i.e., anyone who isn't doing a significant amount of repairs), has their personal DPS compared to the average. The FC can then set percentage (lets say 50% for this example) of that average DPS. If a pilot drops below that, an un-intrusive message can be displayed to the FC, and the FC only.


This allows FC's to decide whether the pilot is leeching. For example, if they're in a deadspace fit Machariel or Vindicator, and they're doing less than half the average DPS in a Vanguard site, then it's pretty fair to say that they're probably leeching. If they're a triple webbing Loki, then chances are they're just concentrating on that. A good FC would be able to glance the report quickly and tell if anyone's leeching or not.


Again, incursions are really the only thing I can think of as anything like this being useful. You could argue a case for running anomalies in null with your corp or whatever, but that's normally a lot more relaxed, and as it's your corp, then it's not classed as "leeching".


Finally, on the flip-side, a personal DPS meter, or some kind of accessible battle report could be extremely handy... Want to find out, in real-life scenarios how much the changes to cruise missiles have made to hitting frigates? Don't really have/want a head for numbers? Then go out in the field, try it out, have a look at a brief battle report.

You could then share them if you wanted to or whatever...


TL;DR: I can see Incursion FC's having a use for this, as well as maybe other FC's in general. I don't see the general populous as needing it, and don't really think it should be implemented for everyone. As a personal tool, just for your eyes, about your performance in a fight/mission, I think it could also be good.


Oh, and as for the people talking about Killmails... They're not particularly detailed, especially in terms of damage breakdown. Also, I've only ever received a killmail when getting popped in PvE, which doesn't help me tune my performance for certain fits/missions really.

No. This is now WOW. No dps meters, no damage tracking. No people screaming "your dps isn't bla bla bla"

It is a metric the public does not need.

But WoW is dying and some of its players are coming here aparrently. We need new ways to identify their incompetence so we can send them back to their unholy spawning pits.

Posting awful ideas about how to turn already toxic sections of the community into something even worse is a great way to spot them too...

If you read what i wrote i wasnt saying to change the game for newcomers at all, in fact i was saying more of the oposite. Either way i would not say a damage meter is a change, more of a small addition to the existing UI.

Just because damage meters was a thing of WoW raids still does not suffice it should not be implemented - it would have to be done intelligently and not for epeen intentoins. However, I agree nonetheless that it will not help much. Damage contribution is already shown in killmails and I think that says much.

If anything, Healmeters would be rather welcoming. See who is saving whose precious ship. Even if there is the usual "thanks loggies" somewhere in the chat, the guys who actually keeping everybody else alive are the usual unsung heroes. It would be good to see a Healmeters rather than Damagemeters.

Also to add, the actual problem with Damagemeters is pretty much that people start using that as a scale for player's skills etc. I hate to be biased, but back with WoW, Damagemeters alongside Gearscore just got way out of hand. People could still be awesome with the gear they had, but we just shoved aside due to those two features. So, Dmgmeters is usually misused by the community - and thus should not be seen anywhere else but in WoW itself.

Healmeters (or at least seeing heals in killmails) would be something more useful, though marginally.

Surely they can be identified without resorting to basing it on who is and isn't using a damage meter. I mean it was bad enough that you identified incompetents in World of Warcraft by who wasn't using a damage meter without identifying incompetents in EVE Online by who is using one.

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Personally I rather enjoy having "damage meters" like Recount in MMOs like World of Warcraft and Rift. They might not be 100% accurate, but they help me get a rough idea of how well, or poorly, I'm performing compared to my peers. Case in point with World of Warcraft I ran through one dungeon with a pair of hunters doing something like 1k DPS combined between the two of them. When I started doing the same thing with my hunter she had "worse" gear, a "worse" build, and she averaged 3x their combined damage. Likewise with Rift when I first started playing around with "hurt to heal" builds for support or healing roles having the meters on-hand was a good way of finding out that even if most of my healing was the result of me damaging mobs my DPS was, usually, half that of the lowest DPS member while my healing managed to be adequate.

(Un)Fortunately for EVE players there are too many variables involved to really make damage meters a tool capable of providing meaningful information for entire groups of players. As such the implementation of a "fleet damage meter" would be a colossally stupid idea that would prove invidious at the least. In order to place its data into some sort of accurate context it would have to collect, and provide, a potentially significant amount of data which would in turn increase the load on the servers due to higher network traffic, increase the bandwidth necessary to play EVE while it is running which in turn would subsequently make players more prone to lag issues, and chug through players' available data limits at a higher rate. While some of those concerns might be minor to some people they're still there, and the rest aren't so very minor either.

However, having said that I would also say that personal damage meters that are calculated purely client side and display no more data than your client receives from the server with no additional data being sent and none of the subsequent increase in server load which could be useful in helping intelligent players gauge their performance might actually have a place in EVE Online.

Combat often has a lot of scroll, and trawling through log files after combat is cumbersome at best. Parsing programs like RJParser for Rift ought to be able to handle the job to a degree, but they can also cause unintended side effects such as the aforementioned parser causing a significant frame rate penalty any time the data windows had any sort of transparency to them. Having an in-game tool to let us view that data in a more meaningful fashion without resorting to a third-party program wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing in that sort of scenario.

tl;dr: Personal damage meters are potentially useful and are worth considering. Fleet damage meters would be unholy abominations which would warrant their creator(s), and instigator(s), being forever immortalized by getting podded in every solar system in EVE, back to back to back to back, while on a live video stream so that everyone can watch it and think, "Thank the gods I'm not (that/those) sorry bastard(s)!"

Most MMOs refuse mods for good reasons:
- They could easily look similar to hack/bot programs.
- They can make content too easy, for example by highlighting whoever needs the healers attention the most, or showing people exactly where to stand in a boss fight. Forcing game designers to balance the game around the mod being present, which forces everyone to get the mod.
- Malware risk.
- They cause unpleasant changes to the community. Like the snobbery a damage meter causes.


Lossmails show bad fits.
Lossmails with them in a fight they should have won means they need to be questioned.
If they have no lossmails, but they do have killmails, then whatever they are doing might be something worth copying.
Looking at their damage numbers on killmails shows how well they are following orders.
Full API key lets you see if they are training the right skills.

What piece of useful information would a damage meter show ?


A damage meter might even hurt them learning Eve, because it emphasizes damage over other useful things like EWAR.

You call it snobbery, i call it quality.


Who's watching TV while playing and fun for the players who enjoy numbers other than ISK.


In every MMO game DPS/Damage is always the majority because offense is simply the best defense. EWAR would be less of a focus yes of course it would, but it should stil show number of targets affected by each ewar pilot with what modules, etc. As i said earlier.

WRONG The damage numbers they get on killmails would show that.
Though some fights are under so much TiDi that watching TV on the other screen doesn't matter. Just keep listening for orders over voice comms.


Not useful information.


In the PvP I get into, having my EWAR work provides much better defense than anything I've seen other than bringing lots of friends to the fight. Prevent them from locking me negates all of their DPS.